Regio Patalis (Latin, 'the region of Patala') is the region around the ancient city of Patala at the mouth of the Indus River in Sindh, Pakistan. The historians of Alexander the Great state that the Indus parted into two branches at the city of Patala before reaching the sea, and the island thus formed was called Patalene, the district of Patala. Alexander constructed a harbour at Patala.
While the Patala was well known to mariners and traders of the Ancient Mediterranean, by the European Middle Ages, mapmakers no longer knew its location. Regio Patalis appeared on late 15th and early 16th century maps and globes in a variety of increasingly erroneous locations, further and further east and south of India. It even appeared on some maps as a promontory of Terra Australis.
The Regio Patalis in classical literature Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus, 23-79 AD) referring to “the island of Patale, at the mouth of the Indus”, wrote in Historia Naturalis: “Also in India [as well as at Aswan in Egypt] at the well-known port of Patale the sun rises on the right and shadows fall southward”.“In eadem India Patalis, celeberrimo portu, sol dexter oritur, umbrae in meridiem cadunt”; Gaius Plinius Secundus, Historia Naturalis, xii.(25).41 and ii.(75).184; quoted in John Watson McCrindle, Ancient India as described in Classical Literature, being a Collection of Greek and Latin Texts relating to India, Westminster, Constable, 1901, p.188.
The geographer Strabo (c.64 BC–c.24 AD) had said: “The Indus falls into the southern sea by two mouths, encompassing the country of Patalênê, which resembles the Delta in Egypt”.Strabo, Geography, bk.XV, c.13, quoted in McCrindle (1901): 19. He noted: “All these [nations] were conquered by Alexander, and last of all he reduced Patalênê, which the Indus forms by splitting into two branches… Patalênê contains a considerable city, Patala, which gives its name to the island”.Strabo, Geography, bk.XV, c.33; quoted in McCrindle (1901): 40.
The 1507 Martin Waldseemüller map shows Patala in this location.The only surviving copy of Waldseemueller's 1507 map is now held by the Library of Congress, Washington DC, and a hi-resolution image of it can be found www.loc.gov
In the late 2nd century BC, Agatharchides of Cnidus recorded merchants from Patala, or as he called it, Potana, coming to the island of Socotra to trade with Alexandrian merchants.Agatharchides of Cnidus, On the Erythraean Sea, translated and edited by Stanley M. Burstein (London, Hakluyt Society, 1989): 169. The 2nd century AD author Dionysios Periegetes said in his Orbis Descriptio: “This river [the Indus] has two mouths, and dashes against the island enclosed between them, called in the tongue of the natives, Patalênê”.Dionysios Periegetes, Orbis Descriptio, lines 1080-1165; quoted in McCrindle (1901): 188. Or, as Priscian put it in his popular rendition of Periegetes: “the River Indus... Patalene is girt by its divided waters.””Indum... Dividua cujus Patalanae cingitur unda”; Priscianus Caesariensis, Periegesis Prisciani (lines 998-1000), in Habes candide lector in hoc opere Prisciani volumen maius, Venetiis, Boneto Locatello, 1496, p.285.
Some scholars identify Patala with Thatta, a one-time capital of Sindh. But the identity of Patala is much debated among scholars. However, as 'Regio' is Latin for 'region', one might expect that 'Patalis' may also be of Latin origin. This indeed appears to be the case, as in ancient Latin 'patalis' meant 'broad-horned', usually used in conjunction with 'bos', meaning an ox or a bull or all sorts of oxen [Thomas Morell, An Abridgement of Ainsworth's Dictionary, English and Latin, Camden Town, London: A. Wilson, 1817], rendering 'region of the broad-horns (bulls)'.
Siltation has caused the Indus to change its course many times since the days of Alexander the Great, and the site of ancient Patala has been subject to much conjecture. Ahmad Hasan Dani, director of the Taxila Institute of Asian Civilisations, Islamabad, concluded: “There has been a vain attempt to identify the city of Patala. If ‘Patala’ is not taken as a proper name but only refers to a city, it can be corrected to ‘Pattana’, that is, [Sanskrit for] a city or port city par excellence, a term applied in a later period to Thatta [onetime capital of Sindh], which is ideally situated in the way the Greek historians describe”.A.H. Dani and P. Bernard, “Alexander and His Successors in Central Asia”, in János Harmatta, B.N. Puri and G.F. Etemadi (editors), History of civilizations of Central Asia (Paris, UNESCO, 1994) II: 85. Herbert Wilhelmy has pointed out that siltation had caused the Indus to change its course many times over the centuries and that in Alexander's time it bifurcated at the site of Bahmanabad, 75 kilometres to the north east of Hyderabad, which John Watson McCrindle had considered to occupy the site of ancient Patala: Herbert Wilhelmy, “Verschollene Städte im Indusdelta“, Geographische Zeitschrift, 56: 4 (1968): 256-294, n.b. 258-63; McCrindle (1901): 19, 40, 124, 188; idem, The Invasion of India by Alexander the Great, Westminster, Constable, 1893, pp.356-7. However, the Dravidian Etymological Dictionary clearly indicates that this word is derived from South and South Central Dravidian languages, and the variety of Sanskrit used for official purposes in Sindh would not have used the term to describe a city.Dravidian Etymological Dictionary
The eighteenth century French geographer, Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville, also identified Thatta with Patala:“Tatta is not only a town, but also a province of India, according to modern travellers; this town has taken the place of the ancient Patala or Pattala, which formerly gave name to the country included between the mouths of the Indus.”Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville, A Geographical Illustration of the Map of India, Translated by William Herbert, London, 1759, p.19; "Tatta est non seulement un ville, mais encore une province de l'Inde, selon les voyageurs modernes. La ville ainsi nommée a pris la place de l'ancienne Patala ou Pattala, qui donnoit autrefois le nom à terrain renfermé entre les bouches de l’Indus." Jean-Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville, Eclaircissements géographiques sur la carte de l'Inde, Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1753, p.39. D'Anville, Orbis Veteribus Notus This opinion was shared by Alexander Burnes, who voyaged up the Indus on a diplomatic mission in 1831–32, and wrote:"The antiquity of Tatta is unquestioned. The Pattala of the Greeks has been sought for in this position, and, I believe, with good reason; for the Indus here divides into two great branches; and these are the words of the historian:- ‘Near Pattala, the river Indus divides itself into two vast branches’ (Arrian, lib.vi). Both Robertson and Vincent appear to have entertained the opinion of its identity with Tatta".Alexander Burnes, Travels into Bokhara: Containing the Narrative of a Voyage on the Indus, London, Murray, 1839, Vol.I, p.27. William Robertson, An Historical Disquisition concerning Ancient India, Basel, Tourneisen, 1792, pp.20: “Patala (the modern Tatta)”; p.40: “Pattala (now Tatta).” William Vincent, The Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean, London, Cadell and Davies, 1807, p.138. “Tatta, the Páttala of the ancients.” Cf. M. Nisard, Pomponius Méla, oeuvres complètes, Paris, Dubochet et Le Chevalier, 1850, p.656: "Cette région [Patalène], qui tirait son nom de Patala, sa principale ville, est comprise aujourd'hui dans ce qu'on appelle le Sindh y, qui avait autrefois pour capitale Tatta, ville de douze à quinze mille âmes, qui occupe l'emplacement de l'antique Patala".
The reason for Pliny mentioning Patala, or as he called it, Patale, was to indicate that it, like the other places mentioned in the same chapter of his Natural History, particularly Syene (Aswan, in Egypt), was situated on or below the Tropic of Cancer and so shadows there were cast southward in midsummer, thus demonstrating the rotundity of the Earth. Pliny, writing in Latin, used the form, Patale: in accordance with convention, he treats Patala, being for him a Greek-derived noun, as a third declension Latin noun with the genitive form Patalis, as though its nominative case was Patale: hence, Regio Patalis not Regio Patalae.Cf. J. André et J. Filliozat: “Patale (71) ou Patala (72) transcription de gr. τα Παταλα [ta Patala]”, Pline l’Ancien: Histoire Naturelle, Texte Établi, Traduit et Commenté, Paris, Société d’Éditions les Belles Lettres, Livre VI, 1980, p.109.
Syene is connected with the measurement of Earth's circumference by Eratosthenes of Cyrene in c.240 BC, although the method traditionally considered a used by Eratosthenes is actually a simplification of another author, Cleomedes, who proposed his readers to imagine to observe the angle of a shadow cast at Alexandria on the day of the summer solstice — eighty-three degrees — and deducting that from the ninety-degree right angle of the sun over Syene on the same day, from that deducing the acute angle — seven degrees — at the apex of the segment of the Earth's circumference represented by the known distance from Syene to Alexandria — 500 stadia — and then multiplying that distance by the value of that angle and dividing it by the 360 degrees of the whole circumference of the Earth: 250,000 stadia (instead of the 252,000 actually measured by Eratosthenes), or 39,690 km, an error of less than one per cent.
The Regio Patalis in Renaissance cosmography
The map of the world by the French mathematician and cosmographer Oronce Fine published in 1531 shows a large promontory attached to the continent of TERRA AVSTRALIS and extending northward almost to the Tropic of Capricorn: this promontory is named REGIO PATALIS (“Region of Patala”).Robert J. King, "Terra Australis Not Yet Known", National Library of Australia, Mapping our World: Terra Incognita to Australia, Canberra, National Library of Australia, 2013, p.82.; A hi-resolution image of Fine's 1531 map can be found at library.sl.nsw.gov.au
Fine's TERRA AVSTRALIS with its REGIO PATALIS is apparently drawn from the globe of the German cosmographer Johann Schoener produced in Nuremberg in 1523.Lucien Gallois, Les Géographes allemands de la Renaissance (Paris, Leroux, 1890, repr. Amsterdam, Meridian, 1963): 92; Franz von Wieser, Magalhães-Strasse und Austral-Continent auf den Globen Johannes Schöner (Innsbruck, 1881): 65. On this globe the Antarctic continent, called TERRA AVSTRALIS RECENTER INVENTA SED NONDUM PLENE COGNITA (“Terra Australis, recently discovered but not yet fully known”) also has a large promontory bearing the name REGIO PATALIS.F.C. Wieder (ed.), Monumenta Cartographica (The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1925) I: 1-4, “The Globe of Johannes Schöner, 1523-1524”, and Plates 1-3.
Schoener developed his globe from the globe made by Martin Behaim in Nuremberg in 1492.George E. Nunn, The Columbus and Magellan Concepts of South American Geography (Glenside, Beans, 1932): 45, 58. On Behaim's globe, India potalis is located south of the Equator on the Hoch India (High India, or India Superior) peninsula, the actual Indochina, on the eastern side of the Sinus Magnus ("Great Gulf", the Gulf of Thailand).E.G. Ravenstein, Martin Behaim: His Life and His Globe, London, George Philip & Son, 1908, p.95. An inscription on Behaim's globe explains that Hoch India (India Superior ), was situated so far to the South that the Pole Star was no longer visible: “because this land lies at the antipodes to our land”.daſs macht daſs deſſelb landt ligt recht fuſs gegen fuſs gegen unſer landt; Ravenstein (1908): 95.